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Star Ledger - N.J. high school graduation rates climb 3 percentage points to 86 percent
NJ Spotlight - High-School Graduation Rates, Test Scores on Upswing in NJ…Annual report shows big achievement gaps remain for minority students
Star Ledger - N.J. high school graduation rates climb 3 percentage points to 86 percent
By Jessica Calefati/The Star-LedgerThe Star-Ledger on December 05, 2012 at 2:26 PM, updated December 06, 2012 at 7:30 AM
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Trenton— Recent efforts to target struggling high school students in large school districts helped boost the statewide graduation rate by 3 percentage points last year, according to statistics released today by the state Department of Education.
Overall, 86 percent of all high school seniors in New Jersey graduated in June, up from 83 percent in the 2010-11 school year. Among the districts showing the largest increases was Newark, the state’s largest.
Many districts have been working to improve classroom performance.
For example, at Union High School in Union County, students with low calculus and English composition grades received tutoring in small groups from teachers who volunteered to work with them after school or during lunch.
In Edison and Boonton, students having trouble with their course work got similar attention from their teachers. In some cases, the extra help began when they were freshmen.
The extra work helped boost the 2012 graduation rate for Union High by 6.41 percentage points, to 90.69 percent. In Edison, the rate for the district’s two high schools increased 4.52 percentage points from 2011, to 93.31 percent. Boonton’s graduation rate increased 6.21 percentage points to 95.42 percent.
The groups of students who have typically struggled to graduate are also doing better, the data show. The graduation rate among African Americans increased 6 percentage points, to 75 percent, and the rate among poor students jumped 5 points, to 73 percent, the statistics show
"I wish I could tell you we had purchased a fancy new math program that we’d spent millions of dollars on, but that type of thing is never what makes the difference for kids in the end," Union Superintendent Patrick Martin said. "This change is about teachers sitting next to kids and helping them learn."
The state Department of Education also released statistics today showing the that elementary and middle school pupils remain on track for success in math and reading.
The percentage of students in grades 3 through 8 who passed the NJ ASK test’s language arts section this year decreased by 1 percentage point, to 65.89 percent. The percentage of students who passed the test’s math section this year decreased less than one percentage point to 75.34 percent.
Educators said the decline was statistically insignificant.
NJ ASK, given each year, tests students in reading and math in grades 3-8. Students in fourth and eight grades are also tested in science.
The achievement gap between affluent and poor students, however, remains vast, the data show. Only 46.17 percent of economically disadvantaged students in grades 3 through 8 passed NJ ASK’s language arts section, while 59.62 percent passed math.
Edison Superintendent Richard O’Malley said that last year, his goals were to boost the diverse district’s third grade language arts proficiency and increase the graduation rates of the township’s two high schools. He succeeded on both, the data show.
"I zeroed in on third grade language arts, and the scores increased. We focused on making every student at the high school level successful as individuals, and the graduation rate went up," O’Malley said. "Targeted interventions are the key to success."
Despite the overall increase in the graduation rate, some districts like Perth Amboy and Bound Brook saw dramatic declines in 2012 compared to 2011.
The percentage of Perth Amboy students who earned diplomas decreased by 10.15 points, to 72.87 percent; the percentage of students who graduated from Bound Brook High School decreased by 11.76 points, to 75 percent, the Department of Education report said.
Perth Amboy Superintendent Janine Caffrey said the shift was the result of better, more accurate data analysis. In years past, he said, the district had not properly coded student withdrawals, an error that inflated the graduation rate.
"What you see reported today is, unfortunately, the true rate of kids who graduate high school in this city," Caffrey said. "This error was not intentional. We did not have a system in place that allowed us to process the data properly."
This is the second year the state used a new, federally mandated formula to calculate the percentage of students who graduate from public high schools, a formula state Education Commissioner Christopher Cerf called more "honest."
Under the old system, schools calculated their graduation rates by dividing the number of seniors receiving diplomas by the number of seniors who enrolled at the start of the school year, plus the number who had dropped out since that class entered high school.
Because the state relied on districts to self-report their graduation rates, some — such as Perth Amboy — under-reported their drop-out statistics. The old methodology also failed to account for mobility.
Now, schools are required to track students using a statewide data collection system that accounts for students who leave a district.
In Newark, more accurate reporting, coupled with an intensive school reform effort led by the Christie administration, resulted in a big increases in the graduation rate. Between 2011 and 2012, the percentage of students graduating from the city’s high schools increased 7 percentage points, to 68.72 percent.
"The results for schools undergoing intensive turnarounds this year are particularly very encouraging, showing that while our achievement gaps across the state are persistent and unacceptably high, we can close them with dedicated support and intervention," Cerf said in a statement.
NJ Spotlight - High-School Graduation Rates, Test Scores on Upswing in NJ…Annual report shows big achievement gaps remain for minority students
By John Mooney, December 6, 2012 in Education|1 Comment
2012 Graduation Rates
Less than 84%
84% - 92%
92% - 96%
More than 96%
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2012 Graduation Rates
Less than 84%
84% - 92%
92% - 96%
More than 96%
Graduation rates and High School Proficiency Assessment scores for New Jersey high schools, click on a school to get the specific rates and scores for each.
The annual report on New Jersey public-school test scores and graduation rates brought mostly good news yesterday, with the 2011-2012 numbers up overall for high schools, less so for the lower grades, and all with the expected cautions and caveats.
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It’s hard to draw a single conclusion from dozens of different grade-by-grade statistics released by the state each year, but much of the focus in the Christie administration’s presentation to the state Board of Education was on high-school graduation rates.
This was the second year of new methodology intended to more accurately track how many students entering high school actually graduated.
And, for all the worry that the change would send New Jersey’s historically highest-in-the-nation ranking plummeting, the state overall fared pretty well in posting a new graduation rate of about 86 percent for the Class of 2012, up from 83 percent in 2011.
That’s still down from graduation rates that have topped 90 percent in the past, and New Jersey no longer remains the nation’s highest among the 40-plus states that have moved to the new federally-mandated method for tracking graduates.
But it still kept the state at the high end with other comparable states in the Northeast, including New York, Massachusetts and Pennsylvania, officials said.
Within the totals were some especially bright spots. Three-quarters of students with disabilities graduated within four years, the fourth-highest rate in the country, and three of the state’s most troubled districts – Newark, Trenton and Paterson – each saw gains as well. Newark’s graduation rate rose from 61 percent to almost 69 percent.
In addition, the state started tracking five-year graduation rates, with the five-year rate for the Class of 2011 rising from 83 percent to 86 percent one year later.
The positive news about graduation rates was coupled with continued upward trends in scores on the state’s High School Proficiency Assessments (HSPA), the required exit exam in language arts and math given to all juniors.
In 2012, 92.7 percent of juniors passed the HSPA language arts on the first try, up from 90.7 percent in 2011 and 87.4 in 2009, and 83.3 percent passed in math, also up slightly from 81 percent in 2009.
The state’s fledgling high-school biology test also continued to show gains, although at lower overall levels than the HSPA’s more comprehensive exam. Last year, 57 percent of those taking biology – mostly high school freshmen -- passed the state’s exam, more than double the 23 percent who passed two years ago.
But then there were the caveats.
The Christie administration has focused much of its school-reform strategy on lifting the lowest-achieving schools -- and the gaps remain wide and deep.
Even in the graduation statistics, the schools’ overall rates in graduating African-American and Hispanic students did not compare so well. While improved from 2011, the graduation rate for African-American students in the Class of 2012 was 75 percent and it was 77 percent for Hispanic students.
The gaps remained wide in NJASK as well. In both language arts and math, there was a difference of as much as 30 percent in the passing rates of white students and African-American or Hispanic students.
Over the last three years, only the language scores on the HSPA showed some significant narrowing of achievement differences.
Overall, elementary and middle-school scores on the New Jersey Assessment of Skills and Knowledge (NJASK) stay largely flat compared to the previous year. In the aggregate for the tests given from 3rd through 8th grades, 65 percent passed in language arts and 75 percent passed in math, both representing very slight drops from 2011.
One encouraging sign in these scores was some progress in nearly two dozen of the state’s very lowest performing schools that two years ago started receiving extra federal funding under the School Improvement Grant (SIG) program as long as they followed specific reforms.
Most of those schools saw gains over the last two years, although their scores are still well below the averages for the state or even other comparable schools.
State Education Commissioner Chris Cerf, in the presentation to the state board, said SIG schools in New Jersey and elsewhere should prove a “critical national experiment” in what it takes to turn around schools with chronic low performances.
“On net, we are encouraged with the progress of the SIG schools,” he said. “The arrow is pointing in the right direction, especially in the elementary schools.
Still, he added: “Although the levels are really not where they need to be, so it’s hard to get too excited.”
